He sat across from me, draped bonelessly in the contoured comfort of a Varkhide chair fashioned for him by one of his Halsite retainers—a tall, angular man of indeterminate age, sandy-haired, lean-cheeked, beak-nosed, with piercing yellow eyes that flashed golden under tufted brows. His face was leathery and hatched with innumerable fine wrinkles, but his eyes and voice were young.
To give the devil his due, he had a wonderful voice—cajoling, persuasive, domineering and demanding. He could use it with all the skill and passionate conviction of a Bearer of the Word. His tongue was a weapon—a club and a rapier—and I had been pounded and pierced with it for nearly two weeks. I hated it, but I had to listen for I was literally a captive audience.
"As I was saying last time," Wolverton continued, "rabbits have nothing on the human race. Given a halfway favorable opportunity and sufficient time, humanity can make a planet look like the Australian bush. Men don't understand it until it's too late—and then, stifled by their own swarm, they either degenerate or strike out to find a new world where a man can breathe. Always they go in pairs—male and female—and pretty soon another world becomes another rabbit warren."
"What's a rabbit?" I asked.
Wolverton looked at me and laughed. "It's obvious you've never been on the Inner Worlds, have you?"
I shook my head. "I am an Adept," I said. "I am satisfied here in Promised Land."
"Thought so. You wouldn't be asking about rabbits if you had. The early colonists took them along as food animals,—and it's touch and go whether men or rabbits are the dominant species on some planets."
He didn't explain any further, but I got the general idea.
"But that isn't the point," Wolverton went on, his voice mellow and persuasive. "Rabbits maintain a fairly balanced ecology because they're more subject to natural forces which we humans ignore or circumvent. We change environment to meet our needs—and in those rare instances where environment changes us, we adapt to it and change ourselves. Take Samar for example, normally a human being is monogamous either by nature or by law—but what happens when women outnumber men?"